Rochelle Riley: 100 years of Girl Scouts is more than just cookies

March 9, 2012

Troop 42001 in Redford Township has met at the home of Lori Charlton, center, since most of the girls were in first grade. During camp last year, "they helped run the show ... went to each cabin to welcome everybody," Charlton said. / KIMBERLY P. MITCHELL/Detroit Free Press

"It has made me a better person," said the 12-year-old seventh-grader at Pierce Middle School in Redford Township. "I've learned about different religions and different places in the world and that I have things that some people in the world don't. And I learned that everyone in this world is equal no matter your skin color, your race or your religion."

If that were all that Girl Scouts did it would be enough, but the organization, celebrating its 100th anniversary Monday, has spent decades teaching girls to perform community service, teaching girls that achievement matters and rewarding them when they excel.

"We are creating the citizens of tomorrow and the leaders of tomorrow," said Denise Dalrymple, CEO of Girl Scouts of Southeastern Michigan.

Shelby is one of nine girls in Troop 42001 in Redford Township. She is one of 65,000 Girl Scouts in Michigan's Lower Peninsula overseen by 15,000 active adult volunteers. There are about 2.3 million Girl Scouts nationwide.

The Redford troop, which comprises seventh-graders and one high school junior, is earning a Journey Award and Silver Award by studying images of women and creating a way for girls and women to tell their own stories.

"We're working on a book right now that's helping me to get to know more about who I am," said Jeanna Washington, 12. "One thing we had to do was cut out things from a magazine and put it back together."

The girls clipped pictures of makeup and lipstick, tight clothes and faces. Their job was to transform the media images into something else.

"I made a whole new person, and she had different parts of different faces, and I wrote, 'You look beautiful just the way you are,' " Jeanna said.

Another Scout turned her cutout images into a pair of glasses to show that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Troop 42001 has met in the basement of Lori Charlton's home every first and third Tuesday since most of the girls were in first grade.

They do the fashion shows and chocolate-making and cake-baking, Charlton said.

But they do more.

"The girls just went last year to camp, and my troop and another troop were the leaders," said Charlton, a co-leader of the group. "They helped run the show, did the games, worked the kitchen, ran the cabins, went to each cabin to welcome everybody. They've gone to nursing homes and sung songs on the holidays."

To earn their Silver Award, Charlton said the girls plan to decorate ceiling tiles with messages of hope and place them in nursing homes or children's hospitals.

It's the kind of work that Girl Scouts Founder Juliette Gordon Low might have imagined 100 years ago when she first assembled girls at her Savannah, Ga., home.

Scouts have spent the decades since providing public service in times of war, in times of domestic crisis and whenever service was needed. In the 1990s, 4 million Scouts worked with former first lady Barbara Bush on projects to combat illiteracy.

Dalrymple said that she has been befuddled by recent attempts to connect the Scouts with Planned Parenthood.

"I don't know what happened to this country where inclusion and diversity and respect for diversity became radical. How did it happen that respect for girls became radical?" she said.

"I don't understand why we're in the cross hairs of the culture wars. If you are a person who is against abortion, you would want girls in Scouts," she said. "The longer girls are in Scouts, according to our research, the less likely they are to be involved in sexual activity, the less likely they are to be involved with alcohol and other drugs and the more likely they are to graduate from high school."

An organization that most people associate with cookies has never been just about cookies. But behind the millions of dollars raised and millions of projects completed, Scouts are still troops -- groups of girls who make each other feel better about themselves.

At least that's what Jeanna Washington likes.

"I like that I get to make new friends and I like that I get to know a little bit more about myself, and I like helping in the community when we do our service projects," she said. "Sometimes, I can be shy. I'm not very outspoken. They give me inspiration. I'm learning to be more assertive."